As previously mentioned, I like romantic stories, so much so that I will write the odd piece of romantic fiction myself. I wrote Sleeping Beauty for my wife, and it is of course loosely inspired by the classic fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty, but only loosely. I hope you enjoy it :-D

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty by Burne JonesSebastian strode down the path, angry and frustrated. He was right, he had the evidence, all the proof anybody could want, but no one would listen. And why weren’t they listening? All because if they admitted that he was right, they would have to admit they were wrong. Admit that 100 years of tradition was wrong. In this village, you didn’t mess with tradition, no sir!

The official history told it thus: In the glade beyond the tall hill lay a grove of oak trees, and within that grove lay a bed. Upon that bed lay a princess, cursed to sleep by the Witch until a prince kissed her lips upon his 16th birthday. That’s where the histories got it wrong, though. Sebastian had seen the princess, caught in her eternal sleep. Had even kissed her on his 16th birthday, as had every other young man in his village. There had been a time, before Sebastian had been born, when hopeful young men came from all across the land to try their lips on hers, all to no avail. Even the visiting princes hadn’t been her prince.

This morning he had approached the council for the last time, all his evidence in hand. They had refused to even see him, tired of his incessant obsession. Pounding on the door, he had demanded entrance to the council chambers, crying, pleading, and begging for one last chance to be heard. Finally, Elder Samuel had come out to speak with him.

“Boy,” he said, “we have all been captivated by her beauty, and dreamt of being the one to awaken her back to this world. But it is the mark of a man to accept that which he cannot have, and be content with that which lies within his reach. Go home, find a woman who walks the land of the living, work your father’s farm until it becomes yours, and perhaps one day your son will be the prince to awaken our sleeping beauty. But you must accept that it will not be your lips that breath life back into her still form. If you persist in this madness the Elders will be forced to cast you out, lest your madness infect the other young men!”

Sebastian had protested, and tried to show the Elder how the Histories were wrong, but Elder Samuel had refused to hear it, eventually shutting the door in Sebastian’s face with a final word of warning. “One more word, boy, and I will cast you out myself!”

It had all started on Sebastian’s 16th birthday. He had, as so many others before him, gone to the grove for the very first time. The early morning light filtered through the trees, illuminating the still form upon the bower. A quiet hush lay over the grove, as though the entire forest waited to see if he would be the one. The true love who would awaken the Princess with a kiss.

She lay there on her silken bed as though dead. Her breath came so infrequently that even as Sebastian made the slow walk across the forest floor to stand by her side, he could only detect one shallow rise and fall of her breast. Heart hammering in his chest, Sebastian had stood there for a long moment, gazing at the beauty laid before him.

Her auburn locks spread across the pillow, creating a shimmering halo around her heart shaped face. Her skin was soft and smooth, and had a texture that begged tender caress and loving touch. Her mouth was small, with a slight pout, red lips waiting for the right kiss. His kiss. He had been certain, so sure that he was the one who would awaken her back to life.

At the attending Elders nudge, Sebastian had broken out of his worshipful reverie, and taking a deep breath to calm his thundering heart, bent to kiss her. Unfortunately, nothing had happened. Except that something had happened. Though she did not awake, Sebastian had been sure that he had felt something. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was that he had felt, his descriptions alternating between a spark, a warmth, a tremble of response, a… something. He didn’t know what. There had been something, he was sure of it. And that’s what had led him to his present circumstance.

Certain that he was the one, Sebastian had scoured the Histories for over a year, reading documents so old that they had been all but forgotten by everyone else. And what he found had shocked him. For the older the histories were, the less they resembled the story as it was told today. Finally, just a few weeks ago, he had stumbled upon the Witches own journal!

It had been buried in an unused storeroom of the old castle, under a pile of debris left from ages past, and badly damaged. But in those few precious pages that survived he found the Witch’s own account of those fateful events. Well, most of it, anyway. It told the story of a princess for whom nothing was good enough, and particularly no suitor. The witch had sent her own son, a fine young man of intelligence and handsome good looks to ask the Princess’ hand, only to see him rebuffed as well.

The Witch, enraged at the slight paid to her son, cast a curse upon the Princess, declaring that she would sleep until a young man over the age of 16 kissed her… and here the rest of the page had been rendered unreadable by time and rot.. Sebastian had seized upon the manuscript, exulting! Not on a young man’s 16th birthday, but a young man over the age of 16. Over! No wonder she hadn’t awakened, he hadn’t been old enough! But now he was over the age of 16, now he was… ready.

And so Sebastian had approached the Elders, full of conviction that he would have his chance to secure his Princess once and for all. But they had refused to hear him. Had told him to abandon what he knew to be true, and go home. Too angry to return to his father’s house, he had run into the forest instead, his feet leading him wherever they might, his heart full of bitterness and his eyes brimming with angry tears.

His thoughts whirling faster and faster, Sebastian stumbled on through the forest until a treacherous root snagged his foot, sending him sprawling to the forest floor with a surprised grunt. Rubbing a bruised elbow, Sebastian took stock of his whereabouts, finding, much to his surprise, that he was just a few minutes from the grove. Her grove. While his mind had been busy racing in circles, his feet had taken him unerringly to the one place that he truly wanted to be: by her side.

Clambering slowly to his feet, Sebastian glanced back the way he had come, fearful that someone had seen him run into the woods, and following, might catch him near the grove. While it was not forbidden to walk the paths near the grove, none were permitted within, except in the company of an Elder, and then only when it was a young man’s turn to try his kiss upon her ruby lips. But he wasn’t in the forbidden area, so he had nothing to fear. So why was he nervous, glancing about with a guilty conscience?

Because he knew what he would do next. He knew what he must do next. Sebastian could no longer deny his love, his year of searching for the key to her heart. Only to find that nobody wanted to let him use that key. Well, he would use it, and if it proved that he was wrong… Sebastian refused to consider that possibility, turning his feet instead to walk to his hallowed love’s grove.

It was much as he remembered it, a large open space carpeted in a growth of spring shoots and soft mosses. On his earlier visit a year ago, it had been an early spring morning, with the sun filtering in through the trees to illuminate the scene laid out before him. This time it was high summer, the sun’s heat competing with cooler patches of shade, a playful breeze rippling across the summer grasses.

Sebastian hesitated in the shadows cast by the majestic oaks that ringed the grove, silent sentinels to all the comings and goings in the glade. A small bird sang his merry song in a bush somewhere, seeming to Sebastian a herald, calling out the advent of love’s true kiss. He could stop now, turn back and return to his father’s farm. Get a wife from one of the many young lasses who had expressed an interest in such a union with him. He could pretend that he didn’t know the truth. Perhaps he could even convince himself that he had felt nothing in that fateful birthday kiss. He could also cast himself off of a tall cliff, for his death would be just as sure, and all the swifter for it.

Gazing at the Princess, Sebastian knew that he could never turn away from this truth: asleep or awake, she was his destiny. He could love none but her, and she would love none but him. His rational mind rose up, asking how he could believe such a thing from a woman who had rejected the comeliest princes in the land. If they weren’t good enough for her, what made him think that she would accept the love of a farmer’s son with nothing to offer but his devotion, and the dirt under his fingernails?

Love’s triumph is found in its unyielding abandonment of rational argument. It is the sole function of rationality to take all that is good and find the flaws hidden within the beauty, and finding them, declare these stains as truth long and loud, magnifying them until all attention is upon the soiled visage of reality, and all beauty is trivialized as the illusory dreams of children and idealists. Love, on the other hand, speaks the language of faith, and no further explanation is required, or possible.

And so it was that Sebastian’s rational mind was thoroughly denounced, love narrowing his focus and guiding his vision to the reality before him; that his love would create a new reality, and awaken to life his all manifest desires in the shape of the beautiful woman asleep on the bower before him. Approaching the bed with a reverent step, as a supplicant approaches the altar of his god, Sebastian forgot all other concerns. His fears melted away, and his anger at the Elders cast aside, he prepared himself for this, the singular task for which he had been born.

Standing over her once again, he paused, contemplating the perfect beauty laid out before him. How well he remembered her auburn hair, her smooth cheeks and rosebud lips. How many times had he dreamt of once again pressing his lips to hers, this time to feel the quickening of her breast as she drew life from his tender embrace?

Bending over her, he paused, lips a scant inch from hers, caught in a moment pregnant with all his hopes and dreams, waiting for that one touch that would burst them all into a new life. What shape that life would take hung here, suspended in Sebastian’s last chance to turn away, to accept the reality that the others would have him take up. But that too, was a lie. He had given up his last chance months ago, when he had chosen to continue his search for the truth in defiance of his father and the Elders. Now, in this eternal moment, there was no more chance, only fate, destiny, and the certainty of an end to his quest, for good or ill.

His lips met hers, and love opened her eyes, giving birth to truth and beauty, and once more showing that rational thought is but a collection of hollow platitudes to be thrown in the face of Love.

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